***Originally posted 1-15-14I have to admit, I'm not all that tech-saavy. There are certain things I can do, but when it comes to new stuff, I'm usually a bit behind. I put the first book I ever wrote, "Someone Always Loved You" up for sale on Amazon as an e-book quite some time ago. Actually, my husband did it and I later revised what he did once I learned a few things. Later, I created a paperback version of the book and put it up for sale as well.Someone Always Loved YouLet me digress for a moment. "Someone Always Loved You" is a book I wrote from the heart. I was inspired to write it and I felt I HAD to write it or it would never stop bugging me. When I finally put it up for sale on amazon, I had no illusions about making money off of it. I did not expect to find fame and fortune from it. I simply wanted people to read and enjoy the story. It's a story I, to this day, cannot get out of my mind. I love the story and I want others to love the story. It's as simple as that.For that reason, I placed the e-book for sale for 99 cents. Even if I sell hundreds of copies, I'm not going to make much and I don't care. I just want people to enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it, if that's possible.Occasionally, as I was balancing my check book, I would notice a payment from amazon. To be honest, I never really paid that much attention to them. But after a few months of receiving $30 payments or more, I began to wonder. Was this from “Someone Always Loved You”? I began to investigate and after a little trial and error, I found the place I needed to look and discovered that the book was indeed selling. The last few months it had sold nearly 100 copies! I looked back and saw several months in a row of 90+ book sales. Before that, 60, before that 50 and on down. Somehow, word had spread over the months and my little novel was being read. Literally by hundreds of people! I was excited about the idea that people were actually reading “Someone Always Loved You.” There have been five reviews up on amazon about the book for a while and I wondered where they came from. Perhaps now I know! Days after I looked this information up, my mom forwarded an email to me. She had gotten an email from Amazon that suggested, based on other purchases, that she buy “Someone Always Loved You.” I had to laugh because she was the book’s very first reader. However, I was thrilled to see that Amazon was actually suggesting it to people. Though I don’t know why, I don’t really care! I was excited that it was spreading, however it was happening.Perhaps emails from Amazon is how people are discovering it. Maybe people are recommending it. I don’t really know. Like I said, it’s not my goal to make money from “Someone Always Loved You.” I simply want people to enjoy the story as I do.

If you happen to have read the book, please let me know how you heard about it. I’m interested to hear how it’s spreading. I hope that anyone who does read it enjoys it even half as much as I enjoyed writing it.Someone Always Loved You e-book link

***Originally posted 1-1-15What grabs you when you're looking for a book? The cover first, perhaps? Maybe even the author's name? The title? Then maybe you read the back of the book to see what it's about. If you're still interested, you open the front cover and read the first line. If that first line is good, you get the book. If not, you might move on to something else.A year ago November I attended a writing conference in Kansas City. One of the classes was about writing that epic first line. It's important to drawing the reader in, but before you even have readers, it's important to getting an agent and/or a publisher. I thought to celebrate the first day of a new year, I would present the first lines from some of my books. Some were written before that conference and some after. I will not which is which so you can see if the conference class helped me be more conscious about that particular trick of the trade.These books were written before the conference.Someone Always Loved YouSomeone Always Loved YouThe bright yellow taxi took the curve on two wheels.

Beyond the BarsIt was too hot in the San Francisco apartment, but the bomb maker hardly noticed.

Taxi DeliveryJed Leida swerved to the left and laid on the horn.

Mending FencesMaria Miller had never been so scared in her life.

Mending HeartsBeth Schrock had a sore throat but since she was working on sewing some new clothing that day, it didn't matter.These lines were written after the conference.

God in the Kitchen"You should have a moustache," the check out clerk said as she grabbed a can of soup from the conveyor belt.(I wrote this book before the conference, but revised the beginning after.)Wrong Place, Right Time(to be released December 2014)"Stop the wedding!" Kate Covington shouted a little too loudly into the small wedding chapel.Accept this Dandelion(under consideration for publication)"My favorite flower," Rene Lockhart said, blinking into the bright light of the camera, "is the dandelion."Mamarazzi(to be written starting in January, though I have the first line and a bit more already.)She wasn't sure what bothered her more...what she did for a living or the fact that she was getting good at it.So there are my first lines as they stand. For the first day of the year, I hope you enjoyed them. Looking back I can definitely tell a difference before and after the conference. Before, I'd just start writing. After, I thought about it quite a bit before I jumped right in.Happy New Year! I need to get back to writing Mamarazzi so I'll make this short!

***Originally posted 11-20-13One of the questions I get asked more than anything else is: Where do you come up with your ideas? I don't know how many different answers I've given. It all depends on what book or story I'm talking about at the time and where I really DID get the idea! Even the WAY I wrote the book varies depending on when I wrote it. Here are a few of the ways I've answered the question: Where do you come up with your ideas?Someone Always Loved You-Real LifeSometimes, my books are based on experiences from real life that I have fictionalized. Take "Someone Always Loved You," for example. This was the first book I ever wrote. It is based around a woman in a coma. The idea I had when I started it was that I wanted to have someone in a coma throughout the book. The reader would get to see what she experienced. She would hear people talking around her at times and she would be in a dream-like state at other times, re-living past experiences and so on. That was the entire basis for the book. It was something I wanted to write for a long time because my grandmother was in a coma on two separate occasions and I always wondered what she experienced when she was in that state. I mulled the idea over for years before the prologue for the book just simply jumped into my mind...and then wouldn't leave. The idea behind the prologue was that an EMT driver would actually hit the woman on her way into the hospital, sending her into a coma. From that point on, I had no idea what would happen. I wrote the prologue and then had to finish the book. But I never knew what would happen day to day as I wrote. A lot of the stories the woman in the coma relives are things that happened to me in real life. Though many of them are figments of my imagination. Many of the characters have pieces of me or someone I know, though they are all most certainly fictional at their core. This book, more than any other, is based on real life experiences.

-Friend IdeasA friend of mine enjoys the fact that I write and she likes giving me ideas. Some of them I have used and others I have stored away for later. One time, she told me that I should find an event in history and write about it from five different people's perspectives. Her idea is the basis of my novel "Beyond the Bars." Though when I sat down to write it, I knew I didn't want to do anything historical. I'm a fiction writer. I would make something up! As the idea formed, I thought it might be neat to have similar events happening across the country with different people experiencing the blow back. One would even die in the event and would then go on to speak about it from beyond. There's a prisoner, a priest, a mother, and a cop involved and they all have different views on what happened. And it all came about from that one brief idea from a friend. In this book, I experimented in truly writing it a chapter at a time. I did my best not to think beyond that chapter. I engulfed myself in the character I was working with and tried to see things as they saw them. Then, the next day when I moved to another chapter, I would move on. The result became more of a thriller than I expected and I struggled with the title for a long time, but settled on "Beyond the Bars." Read it and you'll understand why.

-Random SentencesI was in church one Sunday and the pastor talked about what we would say to God if He showed up in our kitchen. I remember nothing else about the sermon as I'm sure I was entertaining my daughter and attempting to keep her as quiet as possible at the time. but that one sentence became the basis for my novel, "God in the Kitchen." I thought it might be interesting to have a God-like being (more of an angel, really,) appear to a man in his kitchen and help him find his way in life. It became more of a romance/love story, but it had a deeper message of trusting God as well. It was the first and so far only Christian fiction novel I have written. And I got the idea from one phrase.-Who Knows WhereI attended a writing conference last November. An agent ran several classes and I attended as many as I could. In one class, she taught us to write "hooks" for first sentences. The idea was that people might pick up a book, look at the cover and the title, and then open it and read a bit to see if they wanted it. The first sentence needed to hook them in. She then had us write first sentences and share them with the group. I came up with "Stop the wedding!" Later in the conference, I attended another one of her classes about writing romance novels. I hadn't ever written romance before, though all of my books had romantic elements involved in them. When I got home, I caught up on some things and then I wrote "Wrong Place, Right Time." The first line is: "Stop the wedding!" The novel will come out December 2014 from The Writer's Coffee Shop.-TV showsThere aren't many shows that I feel like I HAVE to see. One such show is the Bachelor. People who know me think that's funny because it's not really in line with my personality. But I find the show hilarious and highly entertaining. After writing one romance, I wanted to base a novel on the Bachelor. What if there was a local bachelor show without so much glitz? What resulted was "Accept This Dandelion," and the characters can't do anything right. It ended up being a lot funnier than I intended, simply because of the mood I was in when writing it. And probably because of the lack of sleep two little girls provided me with. This novel now awaits an answer from my publisher. I am hoping it will be in the line up to come out sometime after "Wrong Place, Right Time."

So in conclusion, how do I write thee? In a number of ways! Who cares why! I enjoy it and with any luck, readers do as well!

***Originally posted 10-23-13When I was in radio, I did a little writing here and there for scripts and other such things, but I missed long form writing. In college, it was fine because I had plenty of papers to write, but once I graduated and started my career, I didn't have that creative outlet anymore and I needed it. I tell people that the prologue for "Someone Always Love You" was something that came to me and bugged me. It actually kept me awake at night, begging to be written.So, one day, on a break from work, I sat down and wrote it out. I felt better! But the story was there and though I didn't know what it was, exactly, I HAD to finish it. It deserved that much. I had never written a novel before, but that was exactly what I set forth to do.I honestly had no idea what was going to happen in the book. The main idea was based around a woman in a coma. My grandmother was in a coma on two separate occasions and I always wondered if she could hear the people around her...if she had thoughts, dreams, or other things going on in her mind. Though I don't know what really happens in people's minds when they are in comas, the story is based on my idea of what it might be.What came to me for the prologue was HOW the woman gets thrown into the coma in the first place. From that point on, I really had no idea what was going to happen. I wanted her to have memories of her life and I wanted her to hear some of the things going on around her. What those memories would be and what those items she would overhear would be were up in the air. I literally just sat down a wrote.Characters began to form and with them, an intricate story line of love, family ties, tragedy, mishaps and many other elements came. Somehow, it all came together and I completed the manuscript in a little over a month. I had no idea what to call it and no idea what to do with it.My mom helped me arrive at the title of "Someone Always Loved You" and I approached agents and publishers and so on. Though a few asked for more chapters, no one took the bait and I pushed the novel to the side and went on with everyday life.Years later, my husband "published" the novel in ebook form as a present to me. I went on to self-publish is in paperback form for fun as well. I hope to go back and polish the book a bit more someday now that I know a little more what I am doing. I also took the first few chapters to a writing conference in 2012 and won a contest with them.Someone Always Loved You"Someone Always Loved You" is still one of the favorite stories I have ever written. I feel like a part of me is in every single character and the story is something that I will never let go of completely. Though I have not done all that much with it, somehow, people have been finding it online.Just the other day, I visited the amazon link for the ebook version of the book in order to grab the link and send it to someone. I noticed that there were reviews posted on the book! I was surprised and excited to read them. There are four reviews posted. The first one I asked a reviewer to write and it is a three star review, though everything they said about the book is favorable. The other three reviews are completely unsolicited and I was shocked to see there are all five star reviews.You can read all of the reviews here, but here's what one reviewer said:This book was amazing! The story was not what I had expected at all. The twist and turns it took certainly made me want to finish the book. Each character had their own distinctive personalities and I am not sure who was my favorite. The title goes hand in hand with the storyline. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading the unexpected.Reading what complete strangers thought gave me hope that someday, more people will enjoy the story that I enjoyed writing more than you can imagine. It's a story I will never forget and never completely move past. It haunted my until I wrote it and though I feel better now that it's out of my system, there will be no ridding of it completely. And for that I am thankful.